that's it for us tonight. tomorrow night, tony robbins. "anderson cooper" starts right now. good evening, everyone. a truly remarkable story tonight. it could have been another newtown, connecticut. a confessed teenage killer, investigators say intent on causing a massacre, but instead he's stopped short. that's where our story begins tonight. story straight ahead. and later, how manti te'o explained the girlfriend who never was and his statements about her after he knew she was fictitious. you might have seen the interview. we'll speak to a pair of reporters.

jeremy schaap and tim burke. we begin as we do every night, keeping them honest, looking for facts, not looking for opinions or playing favorite, not supporting democrats or republicans. you can find that elsewhere. just looking at reporting. real reporting looking for the truth, calling out hypocrisy. so tonight, how politicians who oppose women serving in combat reconcile their position with the facts about women serving in combat. you can hear for yourself and you can decide for yourself. today, defense secretary leon panetta announced the military will let women serve in front line combat units, including infantry, artillery, even potentially special forces. >> our nation was built on the premise of the citizen soldier. and our democracy, i believe it is the responsibility of every citizen to protect the nation. >> the policy came together after more than a year's effort by secretary panetta and joint chiefs chairman martin dempsey with the heads of each service signing off.

the branches will have until may to submit plans for integrating women and they'll also be able to make the case that certain specialties should not be open to women, special forces, for instance. early reaction was mixed. one said men and women side by side in combat would be distracting, harmful, and awkward for unit cohesion. >> combat is a very hard game. i think people are being awfully cavalier about this restriction being lifted. combat is a life or death game. if we get this wrong, the loser dies. >> republican senator james inhofe sounded alarm bells saying congress may have to put the brakes on the deal, and family research groups weighed in. family research council asked tonight how much national security is our president willing to forgo to promote this kind of progressive feminism? keeping them honest, though, not every conservative feels this way. buck mckeon said he welcomes the announcement, and people on both sides of the aisle acknowledge it's totally normal if you speak

dutch, hebrew, polish, or finnish. in addition, there's the inescapable fact that in modern warfare the front line can be blurry, meaning troops in nominally noncombat roles can end up in combat. >> in 2003 when i got to baghdad, my first foret out of the operating base, i i hopped into the humvee and i asked the driver, who he was, where he was from? i said, who are you? she leaned down and said, i'm amanda. i said, okay. >> tammy duckworth lost her legs from rpg fire piloting a black hawk chopper in iraq. now congresswoman duckworth looks at today's decision and sees it as a part of tradition of reform and resistance. >> there was study after study after study during world war ii before we allow ed

african-americans to fly planes because people thought african-americans did not have the mental capacity to fly aircraft, yet look at the heroism of the tuskegee airmen. who never lost a bomber aircraft that they were escorting. >> plenty of americans died in the second world war. certainly women have paid the ultimate price in iraq and afghanistan as well. 100 killed, hundreds more wounded. for some, that's a reason to bring women officially into combat roles and allow them the opportunity for command pro-moogs that only combat experiences in some cases can deliver. for others, the idea of women dying in battle is a big reason for keeping them off the battlefield in the first place. i'm joined now by former congressman allen west, an iraq war veteran. also a retired canadian army general, rick hilliard, joins me. women in canada have been serving in combat roles since 1989. he's the author of a book "a soldier's first." congressman west, you completely disagree with this decision. i want to play you something that senator john mccain, obviously a respected military

veteran, had to say about this decision. >> i think it's super. i think it's the right thing to do. i support it. i just want us all to make sure that the standards, particularly the physical standards, are met so that the combat efficiency of the units are not degraded, but it's time to do that. women have proven their enormous contributions they have made in iraq and afghanistan. >> congressman west, do you believe he's wrong? >> i disagree with him. i think my recent experiences in desert shield, desert storm, iraq and afghanistan, i think first and foremost, you need to get the standards correct and make sure we don't have the loss in the quality of the combat units on the front lines. i would be the first to admit you have women that are serving in combat zones and therefore when you leave a forward operating base, anyone is in combat. but i think when you're talking about going into some of these units, now you're talking about something different. we have to make sure we have all of the right policies and procedures in place, and i think we put the cart before the horse

instead of allowing this to matriculate in the correct fashion, i guess. >> this isn't happening overnight. in fact, it's going to take years and each of the units, a specialized unit like the s.e.a.l.s, can make a case why women should not serve in that unit. is that not good enough? >> let's be honest. when you have done this public announcement, it's going to be hard for someone to come back and objectively say we stand against this. you put the pressure on people in the opposite direction. i wish we had gone through the specialized units, done the right study, and as a matter of fact, i believe just recently, we had two females who were involved in marine corps infantry basic training, officer basic training, and they did not meet the standard, they did not pass. i'm not trying to say there aren't exceptions to the rule, but before we make a major policy shift and change like this, we should really get down to the grassroots in some of these units and see how well that's going to work and what would be the problems with implementation. >> general hilliard, canada

opened front lien combat unit roles to women back in 1989. you were involved in that process. in your experience was it the right move, not only in terms of equality but also in terms of military readiness? >> anderson, it was. it was absolutely the right move. first of all, we increased our recruiting pool by 50%, 100% because now women could join all roles in the canadian armed forces and secondly, it just made them equal in our society completely. they now could serve the country in the roles they had. what we found was this, all we said is we are going to make sure our standards, our physical standards, our mental standards, and our ethical standards remain high. in fact, we increased them. if you can meet those standards, you can do any job in the canadian forces, and that's where we have gone over the last 20 years. >> do women have a different standard? sorry, do women have a different standard than men in doing the number of push-ups or pull-ups? >> absolutely not, anderson. one of the first things we had

to realize is we wanted to make sure we had fit soldiers who could carry heavy loads because they're beast of burden on a battlefield. who could get in position, bring fire on an enemy, win against that enemy. so what we started to say are, here are our standards. we want them very high. now, how are we measuring the standards? one of the things we looked at is our physical fitness measurements were often prejudiced towards men. push-ups being a perfect case in point. i used to say, i never met a taliban commander who was frightened of someone doing push-ups. what they were frightened of were fit soldiers who could take the fight to them. and women don't do push-ups well. we started measuring a different way. we found our standards increased. >> congressman west, does that concern you when you hear canada changed their standards or measured them in a different way? >> well, that does concern me, having been in the military myself for 22 years, when you look at the army physical fitness training standards,

there is a difference between the requirements of a male and female soldier at whatever different age group. you just have to equal that out. we can't adjust standards or say that the push-up is really not going to be a fair measurement so we're going to change the measurement. that's the concern that i think we have to have as we move down the road. look, anderson, the big concern we should have right now, we kicked the can on sequestration. sequestration is going to hit in march. that means 200,000 army soldiers and marines are going to be put out. you're going to have a lessening of naval vessels, you're going to have nine less tactical fighter squadrons in the air force. we saw in algeria a horrific attack by radical islamists who were being trained by special forces in mali, some of them, and they defected over, but we had three americans lost. that's where our focus should be right now, the declining situation in the middle east sequestration. not so much this foray into an

equality trip. i have to tell you, if this is the case, then why do we have separate hockey leagues? women should be out there playing ice hockey with the guys in the nhl. we should not have a wnba. i can't shoot a three-pointer, but there are ladies who could certainly take me to the hoop. maybe they should be competing with kobe bryant. >> general, let me ask you, was there ever a case where having women in a combat role improved the situation? i think about going to a village, say, in afghanistan where men may have a problem talking to women. is there a plus in your mind, general? >> i think there are many pluses, anderson, but let me come back to the question i answered earlier. we didn't change our standards. we just went back and made sure we were measuring the standards that we wanted as opposed to doing something that we were doing simply because we had done it for centuries like push-ups, for example. >> instead of push-ups it was carrying a pack or something. >> well, carrying -- soldiers carry an average of 100 pounds in missions in afghanistan. we made sure they could carry

that weight for a long period of time. they could carry their weapons, and when they were finished, they could carry a buddy on their back, a man or woman roughly of their size, they could dig a trench, scale a wall and fight the enemy in a high temperature climate. that's the kind of fitness we wanted. that's what we got from all of our soldiers, male or female. in actual combat operations, we found many pluses. out in villages amongst the population of afghanistan, our male soldiers simply could not speak to the females that were in the area. you simply cannot do that. our female soldiers could talk to them, could obtain all kinds of information, sometimes very actionable intelligence. disseminate the messages ourselves, start to build a rapport with people, and they could do things that male soldiers simply couldn't do because they were females and at the same time, they could do everything else that we asked them. there were many pluses. >> congressman west, even though

this came after a year-long study by the joint chiefs, each head of the joint chiefs signed off on this, you believe this is about politics? >> let's be very honest, when you're at that level of three or four-star general, that's a political appointee. >> you have no doubt this should be done, looking back from 1989. >> anderson, no doubt whatsoever. we had all of those same concerns. the reality is, i saw this myself and i got it from men and women involved in combat operations, when they were fully involved from boot camp onward, as the congressman said, there really was no difference. we produced cohesive combat units that could do the missions we wanted successfully and better, because there were men and women involved who simply wanted to serve our country and do great things as canadians. for us it was one of the most incredible things we could have ever done. absolutely right, absolutely positive. >> interesting. thank you very much, good discussion.

follow me on twitter. let's talk about it right now @andersoncooper. up next, how another new toup massacre might have been but wasn't. how a teenage killer stopped something of even worse. you'll meet the man who confronted him. how doctors made sure a little baby's heart, this is extraordinary. born with her heart beating outside the body. the heart is back in place. she is home. a miraculous story, we'll explain, ahead. you can prevent gas with beano meltaways,

or treat gas with these after you get it. now that's like sunblock before or sun burn cream later. oh, somebody out there's saying, now i get it! take beano before and there'll be no gas. raw politics tonight, a voice in the gun debate with a motivation you might not know about. you might assume california democratic senator dianne feinstein favors strict gun control measures because she's a california democrat representing a fairly liberal constituency. but she introduced legislation

banning 150 assault weapons is the former mayor of san francisco. she came to office as the direct result of a notorious shooting, an assassination. the story from chief congressional correspondent, dana bash. >> reporter: for dianne feinstein, it's personal. >> i became mayor as a product of assassination. both mayor mosconi and supervisor harvey milk have been shot and killed. >> reporter: the death of her colleagues including harvey milk, the first openly gay public official in america, was so traumatic, she rarely discusses it. you were someone who was very close to a tragic shooting. but here at the launch of her push to renew the assault weapons ban, she answered in graphic detail. >> i was the one that found supervisor milk's body. and i was the one to put a finger in a bullet hole, trying to get a pulse. once you have been through one of these episodes, once you see

what the crime scene is like, it isn't like the movies. it changes your view of weapons. >> reporter: she put on an elaborate event, even getting special permission from d.c. and capitol police to display ten different types of assault weapons, including an ar-15, the type of weapon the murderer used to kill children in newtown. >> the assault weapons were designed for and should be used on our battlefields, not on our streets. >> reporter: the proposed legislation would prohibit the sale, manufacture, transfer, and importation of more than 150 assault-style weapons. and ban large capacity magazines with more than ten rounds of ammunition. but to appeal to gun owners, it excludes or keeps legal most handguns and 2,200 hunting and sporting rifles. >> how are you going to go hunting with something like that? if you kill something, there's nothing left to eat.

>> reporter: also here, family members and victims of gun massacres across the country. lily was shot in german class at virginia tech. >> i have a bullet still in my head. i was shot in the jaw. it's one inch -- one millimeter away from my brain stem. >> reporter: still, feinstein is realistic about the slim chance that the assault weapons ban has of passing. >> if anyone asked today, can you win this? the answer is, we don't know. it's so uphill. >> reporter: but pushing gun control is now a white house campaign style effort. and vice president joe biden held a social media town hall, a google hangout to rally support. >> make your voices heard. this outfit, this town listens when people rise up and speak. >> reporter: the white house and feinstein know their biggest hurdle is convincing skeptical fellow democrats from gun right states to support gun control. >> the message to democrats is see what your silence does?

there will be more of these. >> dana bash joins me now. you have been talking to red state democrats including some with gun and nra support in the past. have any told you they'll support this legislation? >> not one, anderson. the dynamic is there are more than half a dozen democrats from the red states up for re-election next year, and they really feel that this is something they don't want to touch with a ten-foot pole. more broadly, there are about a dozen conservative democrats or at least democrats from conservative states who also just are highly skeptical of the idea of supporting this. and if you look at what the nra said today, it gives you an example of why. i'll read you part of the statement, anderson. they said the american people know gun bans do not work and we're confident congress will reject senator feinstein's wrong-headed approach. now, anderson, of all of the proposals she announced earlier this month, it seems that background checks, some form of them, have the best chance of passing,

but even people who support gun control said that's an uphill climb. one person who supports it explained the political dynamite saying democrats don't do well in gun fights. >> interesting. >> anderson. >> dana, thank you very much. this next story is no less remarkable. a terrible tragedy. a family murdered in albuquerque, new mexico, but it's also about how the killings may have been the prelude to a killing rampage, they might have, but they weren't. looking back on it, you have to wonder whether all of the talk in washington, all of the politicing could have prevented any of it? so what did stop this killer? kyung lah explains what happened between something bad and something so much worse. >> reporter: do you feel this place, this church that you love, came pretty darn close to becoming newtown? >> absolutely. 101%. absolutely. >> reporter: vince harrison was staring at the gunman, a 15-year-old nehemiah griego, who early saturday morning according to detectives had just massacred his entire family and planned to

continue killing until the police killed him. oddly enough, the former albuquerque police officer was leading a drill on what to do when a shooter is loose in a church when he came face to face with the reality. >> thinking about it, yeah, it sent chills up my spine. i'm not sure if he came here for help. this was his life away from his home. >> reporter: a home life that was hard, acoring to neighbors, who said the shooter's father practiced tough love. >> i think he was a tyrant. and the kids under that type of pressure. i didn't see any sign of love among those people. >> reporter: the heartbreaking details of what happened in the home starts with young nehemiah arguing with his mother, according to detectives. they said when she went to sleep, the 15-year-old took his father's .22-caliber rifle and shot her in the head. that woke up his brother. investigators say griego lifted his dead mother's head and

showed it to the 9-year-old before killing him as well. investigators say his 5-year-old sister jaelle and the youngest member of the family, a 2-year-old angelina were next. at this point, he changed weapons and waited hours until his father greg came home. detectives say the one-time gang member and now pastor was shot in the back and killed with his own ar-15. investigators believe the boy wasn't done yet, saying he reloaded the ar-15 and the .22-caliber rifle and put them with more ammo into the family minivan. investigators say he wanted to come to this walmart. why? according to the criminal complaint, to murder more people in a populated area, and then die in a gun fight with police. but for some reason, the teen changed his mind and instead drove to his family's church. he left the guns in the van and went inside. he spent the day like an average teenager, hanging out with his girlfriend at the church's skatepark, the basketball court, and the book store.

the first sign of trouble at the megachurch is when the pastor was told by a parishioner, something was wrong with griego's family, so he asked the 15-year-old if he knew anything. >> what he was saying is my family is dead. >> reporter: griego toll the pastor that he had been home and discovered his dead family, but for some reason, did not call police. >> his behavior was quiet and cold and matter of fact, and the red flags started going up. >> reporter: harrison and the pastor decided to take griego to his house to see if the story was true. but a mile from the house, harrison felt something he hadn't since his days as a homicide cop. >> something evil was not right. felt like a darkness. >> reporter: he pulled over and got out of the car so griego couldn't hear him call 911. sheriff's deputies met them at the house, used his key, and found the bodies. deputies arrested the teen quietly. authorities say he eventually confessed and told officers he started his killing spree because he was angry with his

mother. he seemed disconnected, only getting excited when he talked about his love of violent video games. a stunning turn for his church community who saw the youngster grow up as a normal child until the day of the murders. >> part of what i do as a pastor is i'm watching out for the church, for the people here. part of that is paying attention. >> reporter: do you think paying attention made a difference here? >> i think taking it seriously and following through did. >> reporter: the difference between a family tragedy and what could have been another newtown. kyung lah, cnn. albuquerque, new mexico. >> such an extraordinary story. the uncle of the alleged shooter is going to be on "piers morgan" tonight. that should be a remarkable interview. stick around for that. an amazing story next. an example of the extraordinary things doctors can do today. a beautiful baby girl is home with her family tonight at this hour after beating tremendous odds. she was born with her heart outside her body.

it's an incredibly rare birth defect. it's usually fatal. doctors were able to save this little girl's life. dr. sanjay gupta joins me ahead to explain. it's just incredible. >> also later, manti te'o's first on-camera interview about his fake girlfriend. do his answers pass the smell test? we'll explain ahead. ...so as you can see, geico's customer satisfaction is at 97%. mmmm tasty. and cut! very good. people are always asking me how we make these geico adverts. so we're taking you behind the scenes. this coffee cup, for example, is computer animated. it's not real.

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really incredible medical story tonight about an adorable 3-month-old baby who beat the odds and is home from the hospital right now. her name is audrina. she went home wearing what looks like a baby-sized body armor, which it basically is. it's to protect her tiny heart. it's going to make sense to you when you see the next video. it's kind of shocking but it shows why the story is so incredible. take a look. this is what audrina's heart looked like before she had surgery to fix it. it was partially outside her body. she was born with a rare birth defect where it was formed outside of her body. most babies with this defect do not survive.

doctors at texas children's hospital were able to put au audrina's heart back into her chest. we wish her all the best of luck. chief medical correspondent dr. sanjay gupta joins me now. this is incredible. have you ever seen a case like this? >> i had once when i was in residency. there was a baby who was flown to the hospital where i was training, and had this exact same sort of condition, and got an operation. >> i read this is like 8 out of 1 million babies have this problem. is that true? it's that rare? >> yes. it is that rare, and there's a couple important points about that. besides being rare, there's not a lot of data. people always say, what caused it exactly? what is the exact right treatment? when you have numbers that small, anderson, it's hard to come up with that data in particular. also of the babies who have this, 90% of them don't survive more than three days after birth. so it is rare and, in most

cases, fatal. >> to see that image where you basically see the heart beating, i understand they learned about the baby's condition when her mom was like 16 weeks pregnant. could they do anything to help her while she was in utero? >> there's not an in utero operation. they do do certain operations while the baby is still in the uterus but not this one. the mother is essentially given a choice, and you can imagine how difficult this can be. at 16 weeks she's told you can terminate the pregnancy. you can do nothing and provide comfort care after the baby is born, or you could plan this very extensive operation involving several different types of surgical specialties and everything. and she opted for the third option, the odds were definitely stacked against her, but again, so far, it looks like things are going well. >> she had open-heart surgery the day after she was born. what does that entail? it's got to be so difficult. >> with her particular case, and when you talk about this rare

thing, the heart, it's outside the body, it can be outside the body, higher up closer to the neck, closer to the chest here in the sternum area or lower down. what they essentially have to do -- what this is, is essentially not a problem with the heart, per se, but a problem with the outside of the body. the body wall just didn't develop properly. in this case, about a third of the heart got stuck outside the body. they essentially have to open up that area. they have to create room inside the chest cavity because the chest cavity may have become full with the lungs and the rest of the heart, may not be enough room in there, and they have to essentially push the heart back in. and after that, they have to sort of close the skin over the heart making sure it's not being compressed. it's a really remarkable operation. cardiothoracic surgeons are involved, neonatologists and pediatric surgeons are involved. they say up to 80 different medical personnel were involved in the care of audrina. >> she's gone home.

is her heart now back inside her body and they put skin over it and this protective plate? >> yeah, her heart is back inside of her body. it's not protected by the bone, again, the sternum that we're used to feeling here. it just has the skin which is why the protective armor is there. in the long run, there will be something that will be more permanent placed there to protect her heart, to protect her lungs, all of the internal organs. >> but she'll always have that vulnerability? unless she is wearing some sort of ampler? they can't grow a bone or place a bone of it? >> yeah, similar. it's sort of a bone combination -- sometimes a combination of bone and something that is almost a ceramic type thing. right now, she's growing, so if they were to do something more permanent, she would essentially grow out of it. at some point, they're going to put something in that will hopefully last her the rest of her life, and she shouldn't have any other problems. a lot of these types of conditions are associated with other problems, liver problems, or other problems going on in the body. this particular issue, usually

if you solve this problem we're talking about, and she survives the operation, which she has, three and a half months later now, she should do well. >> incredible what doctors can do now. sanjay, thanks so much. we wish her the best. manti te'o tries to explain why he missed all of the red flags that screamed your dead girlfriend isn't real. did talking to katie couric help or hurt his case? two reporters. espn's jeremy schaap and tim burke, who broke the story. they weigh in, ahead. for the new mattress models

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bizarre details of the manti te'o fake girlfriend hoax are seeping out bit by bit. as we hear them, the story only really gets weirder. diane o'meara whose image was stolen to create an identity for the fake girlfriend only learned she was the face of the hoax which lasted for years last week. when she got a call from a california man named ronaiah tuiasosopo, here's what she told me. >> he reached out to me a day or two days before the story broke and relaid to me that he in fact was stalking my profile for five years, taking my photos, and he created -- >> for five years he was doing

that? >> he created this identity that was not me. >> tuiasosopo has not admitted publicly he was the mastermind of the hoax. o'meara says he's apologized to her. today in the first on-camera interview, te'o told his version of the story to katie couric. >> according to manti te'o, he first met the person he thought was lennay kekua over facebook, when he was a freshman in college. this is what he told katie couric. >> i knew of her. we would speak as friends ever since my freshman year, but it didn't start to pick up until my junior year. and it was just -- i didn't meet her and i didn't see her in person, and she just seemed nice. from the pictures, she seemed very beautiful. >> a week ago, te'o told espn their casual friendship over facebook escalated after the fictional kekua told him her father died. they grew closer and would talk

on the phone for hours, according to te'o, who provided from the girl he thought was kekua. >> i'm calling to say good night. i love you. >> he said they tried to meet in person, but something always stopped them, but still, he never suspected anything was wrong. >> this lennay person, there's so many similarities. she was polynesian, she's samoan and i'm samoan. she loved her faith. >> in april of 2012, he received a call supposedly from kekua's brother, telling him she was in a coma after a bad car accident. still, he didn't visit her. they had supposedly been in a serious relationship now for about a year. >> why in the world wouldn't you go visit this girl in the hospital? >> i am up in san diego, which is too far for me to go to the hospital. then i fly to l.a., and the layover time was too short. >> the fictional kekua said she

recovered and te'o said he jumped for joy when he heard the news. but in june, according to espn, lennay kekua told him she had leukemia. >> either you're the most naive person on the planet or this is the saddest story, i think, ever written. at this point, did you think to yourself, manti, are you kidding? now she has leukemia? it goes on and on and on. >> yeah, i thought how could all this happen to one person? >> three months later, on september 12th, te'o was told his grandmother had died. and a few hours later he got a phone call from someone who said he was lennay kekua's brother. >> he was crying and kept screaming. he just said she's gone. >> te'o then dedicated the rest of his football season to his grandmother and to lennay kekua. his coaches shared his story with the media, which along with his stellar performance on the field made him a star. then on december 6th te'o received a phone call. the voice on the other end of the phone said it was lennay kekua.

>> there was a long silent pause. and -- i was angry. just to say the least. >> you knew something was up at that point. >> yes. >> finally. you knew something was up. >> yes. >> and then even though the person he thought was lennay kekua was alive, he still spoke publicly about her death two days later. >> i lost both of my grandparents and my girlfriend to cancer. >> those comments led many to believe that te'o was in on the hoax. if he knew the person named kekua was alive, why did he say publicly she had died? he said he was overwhelmed. >> i get a phone call on december 6th saying she's alive, and i'm going to be put on national tv two days later and they ask me the same question. what would you do?

>> espn's jeremy scheckter did an interview with te'o. they spoke for hours, many questions were asked. no cameras were the stipulation. jeremy schaap joins me now. what did you think of his interview today. did it jive with what he told you? >> yeah, i didn't see any separation between the story he was telling katie and what he said today. when i use the term story, i don't mean he's untruthful. >> you believe him -- >> it's an uncomfortable position to be in as a reporter, when you're asked to vouch for somebody's believability. i don't know whether he's telling the truth. i do know i found him believable and i think katie has said the same. >> do you buy now that ronaiah tuiasosopo's lawyer has come forward and said it was ronaiah's voice all along, pretending to be the girl, pretending to be the girlfriend talking on the phone. do you believe that? >> when i spoke to manti te'o a few days ago, he said he

believed that was one of three people who was the voice of lennay kekua. >> he thinks three different people -- >> he thought it was three different people, two men and one woman. so if tuiasosopo's lawyer was saying it was just tuiasosopo, that means either he's telling the truth or perhaps he's covering for two other people. >> he wants to take the fall for everybody. >> perhaps. and, again, everything here is theoretic. >> we don't know. katie couric pressed him on leading people to believe that he had met lennay in person. let's listen to what he told her. >> i wasn't as forthcoming about it, but i didn't lie. i never was asked, did you see her in person? and so through the embarrassment and the fear of what people may think, that i was committed to this person who i didn't have the chance to meet and she all of a sudden died, that scared me. and so to avoid any further conversation, i kind of wasn't as forthcoming as i should have been.

>> to say he didn't lie, it's sort of semantics. he told you it never occurred to him to go visit his dying girlfriend in the hospital when they were both in the same city. i found that really hard to believe. >> well, he said it was more complicated than that. there were arrangements made. there had been previous contact and suggestions of meetings. she hadn't shown up. you know, it's also not the easiest thing in the world for a kid who is living in hawaii over the summer, back in indiana, necessarily to get to southern california where he thought she was. but i think the big picture here really, anderson, it comes down to this. either you believe that he was one of the perpetrators of this hoax, that he was behind it, and then the little lies don't matter. or you believe that he wasn't, and then the little lies, again, don't really matter because he would be the victim, and he simply is saving face. >> although you could also argue he did kind of realize this is helping him in his career, and so even if he thought, okay, maybe there's something weird

here, he used this to, and he used the media to kind of propel this and perpetuate this idea that he loved this girl, even though now what he's saying is they never met and they weren't that close. >> but if you believe that, then. and i'm saying you could believe whatever you want and people out there are certainly skeptical about this. if you believe he perpetrated this hoax, you necessarily believe that on september 12th, he finds out, which is a fact, that his grandmother dies, someone very close to him, family is tight-knit in the samoan community, somebody he grew up with, and in the next few hours, he decides to create, orchestrate a team in the notre dame locker room, where he kicks cans, he's consoled by teammates, coaches. you have to say to yourself, at that moment in time, he did this to further -- what? his candidacy for heisman trophy? it's possible. i'm just saying if you believe he was behind the hoax, you have to believe in the hours after he

found out his grandmother died, he also decided to stage a fake scene in the notre dame locker room. >> do you think this hurts him long term? >> i don't think it hurts him long term unless somehow it's proved he has been lying. because i think people will eventually step back, take a look at him, and say he was a victim of a very cruel hoax. what was perpetrated on him is almost unimaginably evil. and if people believe that he's the victim, the little lies, the little, you know, dissembling he did to save face because he was embarrassed, it doesn't matter. >> interesting. jeremy schaap, thank you very much. appreciate it. >> it's been just over a week since deadspin.com exposed the hoax. tim burke broke the story. he joins me now. what is your reaction to what you heard today in that interview with katie couric? anything surprising? >> well, honestly, knowing that

katie couric and manti te'o share the same publicist, we didn't expect her to ask any tough questions and she did. when she asked him point blank, when you were in los angeles, why didn't you visit her in the hospital, we got a very revealing answer. that was probably the most surprising part of the interview for me. >> do you still have questions in your mind? are there still questions that you think need to be answered? >> anderson, i think that given -- and i would echo what jeremy said about as a reporter, it's difficult for us to be put in a position of believing or not. all we can do is look for facts. and we've already sort of seen some discrepancies here in regard to the phone records. the phone records that were presented to jeremy after their espn interview are not characterized the same way as katie couric has suggested the ones that were provided to her were. but for the most part, i think we're talking about a hoax, and who is responsible, but in reality, there are three hoaxes. there's the hoax that lennay

kekua ever existed. there's the hoax that she faked her death to hide from drug dealers, both of which were bought at some point by manti te'o. >> reporter: that has caused an appreciation all across the united states. the he'll trade supports hundreds of fishing families and 30 employees in this company alone. for most of the year, eels caught wild pour into this site, to be graded, packed and sent live overseas. scientists are concerned about declining numbers of eels along the coast. and so are the people in the business of catching them. >> there's hash tat pressure. they've built dams over the years. as we harvest the he'lls, everyone wants to make sure it's sustainable. >> reporter: after all, crockman says, he's been up to his elbows in he'lls his whole life. >> when i sort a lot of he'lls and you go to sleep, you see

eels in your sleep. it penetrates your brain. >> that's creepy. >> it is creepy. >> reporter: it's already the business, even in these tough times is sustaining his family and many others on their american journey. tom foreman, cnn, norristown, pennsylvania. coming up, multiple lawsuits over an inch of a sandwich? the "ridiculist" is next.

time for the "ridiculist." tonight we are tackling the obsessive sandwich measuring that is sweeping the world. it all started when an australian teenager posted a picture of his subway foot long that was only 11 inches. the picture went viral. and subway responded, with regards to the bread and calling

it a foot long, subway foot long is a registered trademark, as a descriptive name of the subs sold in subway restaurants and not intended to be a measurement of length. well, that certainly clears it up, doesn't it? and the black forest ham doesn't come from a black forest and the buffalo chicken contains no actual buffalo. little known fact. anyway, people the world over have started measuring their foot longs and posted pictures online. and wouldn't you know it, two lawsuits in the works, one in new jersey and one in illinois, seeking more than $5 million in damages. $5 million foot long doesn't have the same ring to it. $5 million seems like a lot when we are talking about one bite of a sandwich. here is a lawyer for the new jersey plaintiffs on "good morning america." >> people may say it's only about one inch and it may be frivolous. companies should deliver what they promise.